WHO IS JESUS? The question leaves no place for neutrality.
Having heard Jesus teach, some decided He was a prophet, while others insisted He must be the Messiah. Still others, imagining He had been born in Nazareth, said, “He can’t be the Christ because He wasn’t born in Bethlehem. Thus the people were divided because of Jesus (John 7:43).
All over the map about who Jesus was, no one laid a hand on Him. Even the temple guards, sent by the Pharisees to arrest Him, went back empty-handed, somewhat won over by what He said and the way He’d said it. “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted (John 7:47).
The Pharisees berated Jesus and claimed that the crowds who loved to listen to Him were uneducated idiots. None of the upper crust of Jewish society, they crowed, believed in Him. Then one of the upper crust, a man named Nicodemus who had come to Jesus earlier, mildly suggested that perhaps they were judging Him without making an honest appraisal of His actions and words. At that, the leaders turned on Nicodemus, one of their own, and accused him of being an uneducated hick. The religious leaders, headquartered in Jerusalem, thought of Galilee as “Hicksville,” the wrong side of the tracks. “What? Are you from Galilee too? He can’t be the Christ. He was born in Galilee.”
It amazes me that Jesus didn’t present His birth certificate and show His critics that, just as predicted of the Messiah by Old Testament prophets, His birthplace truly was Bethlehem. God sometimes refrains from giving confirmation to those who willfully and stubbornly disbelieve in spite of exposure to strong evidence. Jesus didn’t cast pearls before swine. He didn’t answer their questions about His place of origin, because they weren’t honest seekers.
So the crowd was divided, the Jewish leaders were divided, and Nicodemus was separated from the leaders. But that’s what Jesus does, isn’t it? Jesus divides. He did then and He does now. What He says requires all of us to stand on one side of the line or the other, with no straddling. I may think I’m judging the words of Jesus but, truth is, they are judging me.
Life-action: Take a few minutes right now and try to think of one time when straddling the line wasn’t an option, and you were forced to take a clear position about Christ.